Confirmed: Twitter Plans to Announce Photo-Sharing Service This Week

Twitter will announce a photo-sharing service at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., this week, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is set to speak at D9 on Wednesday.

I am indeed aware that D9 is the conference put on by this very site, but was not able to get sources to confirm the image-hosting announcement on the record. Twitter spokespeople did not reply for a request for comment on the matter.

Currently, Twitter users who wish to post photos in their tweets must host them elsewhere, with popular options including Twitpic, Yfrog, Instagram and Flickr. Users then include links to the photos within their tweets.

Many Twitter clients, including those developed by the company, use the links to go fetch the images and display them inline. But the process could certainly be smoother.

Companies like Twitpic and ImageShack, which operates Yfrog, bring in millions of dollars of revenue by selling advertising on the image pages that are distributed widely by those tweeted links. ImageShack has raised more than $10 million in funding from backers including Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, and Felicis Ventures.

Twitter has previously moved onto turf on which third-party developers had already built Twitter-related businesses. The company has cited a desire to ensure a consistent and accessible user experience on various platforms.

Twitter explicitly told developers to stop making their own clients earlier this year. After that it bought the leading third-party client, TweetDeck.

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